Gulfshore Plumbing Co. books storm calls without picking up.
Tampa plumbing shop competing against five larger companies during hurricane season. Phones go nuts during a storm — flooded basements, sewage backups, broken water heaters — but most calls go unanswered while crews are already in jobs. We deployed text-back across all three lines pre-season. Storm-call conversion rose ~70% over the prior year.
- Trade
- Plumbing · res + emergency
- Service area
- Hillsborough + Pinellas counties
- Plan
- Never Miss a Lead
- Length
- 5 months · pre-season launch
- Step 1Week 0Pre-season audit
Reviewed prior storm-season call logs. ~1,100 calls during peak weeks, 54% unanswered. Owner had stopped trying to staff for the spike — too unpredictable.
- Step 2Week 1Site + texting live
New site with a storm-emergency landing page. Auto-text wired across three phone lines. First test text went to a wrong number because Twilio cached an old config — fixed within an hour.
- Step 3Week 2First storm test
Severe weather Friday night → 71 calls in 4 hours. 56 got texts back, 41 replied, 22 trucks dispatched by Monday.
- Step 4Month 2Refining the script
Tweaked auto-text to ask for address + photo of damage upfront. Cut average phone-tag down by about half.
- Step 5Month 4Peak week
63 service calls in the highest week. Old peak record was 32. Crew added a second emergency truck mid-season — almost too late.
"Used to feel like Christmas morning we couldn't get to the presents. Phones ringing and nobody can pick up. Now the text-back catches them while we're literally bailing out a basement."
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